


Before you knew you'd know me

by crimsonkitty



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Angst, Baseball, First Time, M/M, POV Second Person, RPF, San Francisco Giants
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-01
Updated: 2012-02-01
Packaged: 2017-10-30 11:18:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/331184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crimsonkitty/pseuds/crimsonkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He says what you expect (look at me, watch me, not him, he doesn’t matter, he’s no one, we’re all that matter here, Johnny), but it’s the rise and fall of his voice that settles you, lets you slip back into yourself, slip so far down that no one but him can find you.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before you knew you'd know me

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:1** This was an experiment of words. To see if this was a writing style I could pull off in the long term and... I think I'm really proud of how it came out. This style has always been something I’ve hedged around, afraid of going too far with it. But there comes a time in everyone’s life when all you can say is ‘fuck it.’ :D  
>  **A/N:2** This is partially dedicated to glassyskies whose writing I’ve admired from near and far for many years. Also for being the best kind of cheerleader. Thanks to littlestclouds for looking it over for me as well as everyone I complained or whined at or that I sent little bits and pieces to for being kind in the face of my rabid demand for attention. Title from ‘3 Rounds and a Sound’ by Blind Pilot.

You’ve never heard of him.

It’s not all that surprising. You’ve never heard of a lot of people. Six billion of you on the planet, a couple thousand professional ball players at any one time, and you can’t be expected to know them all.

But the thing is you wish you had. Wish you’d known him. His face and his voice and his stance compiled as little pieces of data tucked into the back of your mind. Wish you’d known what it would feel like long before he’d taken you by the hand and said, ‘Hey. I’m Eli.’

\----

There are the little glances out of the corner of your eye that are mostly accidental with shifting sunbeams catching you unawares. It’s not your fault, it’s just he’s always standing where you’re looking, a second shadow you can’t stare too closely at in case it disappears.

You’ve been getting paired together, more often than not, though it’s spring and everybody gets paired with everybody, rookies and vets and the new guys, regardless of ego. But Bochy and the rest like the two of you together, like the way Eli can calm you when others can’t, turn the roaring in your head to the sound of his voice. Like _him_ because you like him too. 

He calls you Johnny without even a thought (and you think it’s more the southern in him than the baseball, the way it comes off his tongue sideways), settles in like he’s always been there and it’s always been his right to call you Johnny, something you haven’t been called since your freshman year in college.

Since some beef necked senior not getting by on good looks or charm sneered it at you and said, ‘Hey, you. Johnny faggot,’ a new nickname to go with your pretty eyes and baggy clothes and small hands. He wanted your arm and resented your accent, going nowhere past college ball, dreams fizzling out, soaking down into the dirt of the field, dead at the plate.

Unlike you, with your flamethrower status and your future no hitters and your grace. The scouts coming to see you and only you. Everyone knew you were going places. 

You don’t remember punching him in the face, so many years and games and cities ago, teeth leaving scars on your knuckles. With bright lines that match the stitching of a baseball, coming together like puzzle pieces when you throw one in the dirt.

Eli makes you okay with being called Johnny again.

\----

There’s nothing different about today tonight this year except maybe your dad in the crowd, making a mess of himself and a friend of everyone else.

There’s something different about you though.

There’s something you’ve never felt before, something that puts you at the very edge telling you to jump jump, taste the blood in your mouth if you hit too hard, gold in your veins because this could mean something, how hard you fall.

Your insides take the shape of all those little zeroes lined up on a scoreboard you can’t see, waiting to be cracked open until you forgo breathing all together because it’s the strength of your arm and not the air in your lungs keeping you alive, throwing more pitches than deep breaths and you wonder if this is what dying feels like.

The umpire makes the call and there’s screaming screaming on every side, in your head and your shoulders like you almost can’t believe, simultaneous explosion in every piece of you and your beating heart left on the mound and you won’t ever find it again, not even with a baseball pulsing rapid quick against your palm.

Eli is out there and then he’s not, then he’s right in front of you with delight rolling off him in wave after devastating wave, laughing face down in your shoulder with his fingers clenched in the back of your uniform, wrapped around your spine and the only thing keeping you from falling forever.

The others come rushing up, crashing into your back with a tidal force that won’t be stopped until you’re bowled over, smelling the grass and not resisting, drowning in affection and teamhomefamily. But you won’t let go, not for seconds that span eternities, measured in the number of times Eli’s hair pushes against your cheek and how many bruises you’ll have in the morning from his knees knocking into yours.

‘Because we did this together we did we did,’ you tell him in Spanish, whispering it against his neck and his racing heartbeat, and you don’t think he understands but you’re pretty sure he hears you anyway.

\----

It’s the type of game where you’re falling apart and you shouldn’t be. Everything slipping and sliding out of your fingers like you’re throwing through water.

Your head is so far into the game that it’s out, seeing too much but not enough, not the things that you need to be seeing, clock ticking over your head until it’s too much for anyone to handle.

Eli comes out to talk sometime in the fourth, but you can tell he’s been wanting to since the second, knew it would throw off any sort of rhythm you might have had though and didn’t.

He says what you expect ( _look at me, watch me, not him, he doesn’t matter, he’s no one, we’re all that matter here, Johnny_ ), but it’s the rise and fall of his voice that settles you, lets you slip back into yourself, slip so far down that no one but him can find you.

You touch his shoulder once, when he’s walking away, and he turns back like he always does, dependable and searching and strong and yet somehow you still aren’t expecting it, thought he would keep walking, walking right out of the stadium and you’d be out there by yourself with the empty eyes of forty thousand people on you. His face is mostly hidden by the black bars of his mask, drinking you in until you shake your head because it’s not important.

He jogs back to the plate, loose and easy, and you can only stare until the signs are down between his knees, fingers covered in tape because it’s bright out now and you’re trying not to squint.

The next one goes over Utley’s head.

\----

There’s one, right over the plate, across the hitter’s belly and you think he sees it before you do because it’s over the fence before you can blink and you don’t even remember what pitch you were throwing.

Eli tries to talk to you about it. After. After the game and the thunderous silence. After you almost take the hitter to the ground because he looked at you.

They all filter out one by one, go home, put this behind you boys because you got to play 162 like you play opening day and even if it’s a load of bullshit it’s still the truth you fall just shy of somewhere between here and leading the team out onto the field. Then it’s only Murph talking quietly to someone at the far end and even they leave, shoes fading whispers down the fluorescent hallways, enough orange to light your hair on fire.

And then you’re all alone because no one else is willing to even touch you, touch the space you occupy lest they step too far inside or, even worse, catch whatever the hell it is that’s wrong with you.

They’ve got the air conditioning on too high, the hairs of your arms standing up against the cold. Your chair squeaks as it shifts, noise going right up your spine into your brain stem and you think if you closed your eyes for even a moment, you’d open them to find a brick layer of dust and rusted lights clanking to the ground.

There’s a soft noise in front of you and only then do you realize that your eyes have slipped shut and you are afraid. Afraid that the stadium fell apart around your ears and you didn’t notice. But then there’s the noise again and you open your eyes to find Eli standing there in his street clothes, looking down at you with fondness and a concern that sometimes you can’t stand. Suddenly you can hear Eli calling your name, over and over as your head droops further down to your chest.

He crouches down in front of you, arms tucked around his knees like he’s okay with staying there for awhile, let you stare at him with a numb sort of awe that he won’t comment on. You study the way he’s rolled his shirt up past his elbows and the crookedness of his chin, the way it moves when he talks, the way his hands stay where they are, clasped together between his shins.

You don’t consciously make the decision to put your mouth against his except there it is and neither of you are moving, his bottom lip pressing at the seam of yours and you both are cracked and chapped from sun and wind and sweat. You wonder what he would do if you took a taste without asking. Better to ask forgiveness than permission, something you heard once, though you’re not sure you agree.

He says something, muffled against your skin and you can’t hear him, not sure if you want to. You try to pull away, to ask, to run, you don’t know and you probably never will. Except the words he whispered become unimportant (except how they were the most important things in the world) when he grabs your jaw in both hands to taste you instead.

\----

So that’s that.

You don’t really talk about it and neither does he, unspoken and agreed upon until it’s only a series of wordless nods and brushes of skin like you’re out on the mound and following the signs he’s sending.

Everything changes but the way you are together, the affection in his eyes when he rubs your hair and laughs and laughs though you’re not sure what’s so funny that could make him do that (you just know you want him to keep doing it).

He still calls you Johnny.

So in a sense nothing changes at all. Nothing except how you kiss him whenever you’re alone because he said you could. Kiss his mouth and his hands and his stomach and he says yes to all of them. He says a lot of things and you’re sure he means them all because he always does, has never lied to you because to him it’s a simple question of honesty and whether you can trust each other completely.

You feel giddy and stupid, sneaking into each other’s hotel rooms like teenagers like being battery mates doesn’t mean you have every right to be there anyway, battery meaning something sacred that no one will question ever, no matter how close you sit or all the times he’ll put his hand on your neck to calm you down.

So you kiss him and kiss him but you can’t help the shiver when he pushes you down and holds your wrist against the bed, your throwing arm always your throwing arm kept safe in the cradle of his fingers, and kisses you back.

\----

You get traded.

That’s all there is to it. They need offense and they don’t need you. You get traded and things change with a snap of someone else’s fingers, and you’ve been to Kansas City once in your entire life but now you’re on a plane there, jumpy and nervous with passengers looking at you with concern in their faces.

You haven’t told Eli but you’re sure he knows by now, sure everyone knows by now, and you’ll get off the plane to a barrage of messages and missed calls and you might just delete them all.

Except you won’t because sometimes you need to know you’re going to be missed. Because sometimes you still feel like a human being.

The words you want to say to Eli are flying around your head in a hazy sort of ash, filtered and burnt and making you cough until you’re bleeding, throat raw from the fire you’re keeping in.

Your phone is off, even for those first few hours because you and he haven’t seentouchedtalked to each other in awhile, something that usually doesn’t mean anything, and you don’t want this to happen now, be the reason he wants you on the phone. How now you aren’t even playing on the same team and maybe never will again. Never share a dugout or a clubhouse or even a field until you’re looking him in the eyes and it’s your job to end him and be expected to feel nothing.

It’s the off season, middle of November (and you try not to think about November 2010 because right now it doesn’t mean anything, old news and the world has moved on without you on top of it). He’ll be at home in Mississippi and the damp heat, like you should be. Home in Puerto Rico and a different feeling in your gut. Eli with his family and you with your kid and this trade not looming over your head like being pushed off a cliff into the roaring waves.

But the world keeps turning no matter how loud you call for a time out, screaming that you’re not ready it’s not fair, demand to know why you have to keep your game face on when you’re not on the field. You get so busy with trying to be busy and complacent enough that you just forget maybe next year you won’t have him to yourself, every day every game, February through October. Spring training to the world series, gasping for breath and skin tasting like champagne. Hiding in a fucking closet with him, tears pouring down your face because you don’t know what you should be feeling.

Because things happen and people move on, maybe not always of their own volition, but still moving on, still leaving only you’re doing the leaving this time. The fickle winds of the baseball gods blowing someone to the east or the west or somewhere in between, thousands of miles away but still the same old game and wants and clenching fingers.

Just the two of you like it always is ( _we’re all that matter here, Johnny_ ), and you still don’t know what you want to say. No way of bridging that gap, a silent phone or an empty locker, without sixty feet and six inches between you. Without a mask and a glove and a baseball in an arc guiding your eyes to his.

\----


End file.
